Hacklab Toronto!

So I’ve been a member of a hackerspace for about a year now, unofficially for near 2 years. The hackerspace in question is hacklab.to, a hackerspace in Toronto, Canada. We decided to film a promotional video to help show people what we are about and that its a cool space to hang out at. I helped with the conception and editing to a degree, so without further delay, here is the video (best viewed in 1080).

If you are interested as to where you can find a hackerspace near you, just visit hackerspaces.org for a listing of cool places like this near you!

LED Ring light for macro photography

So for a long time I’ve had my Canon S5 IS camera capable of macro and ‘super-macro’ (focusing down to 0mm from the lens), but the main problem that exists is the lack of sufficient and even lighting on the subject to produce a quality, low noise, sharp image. Since ambient light typically comes from above the camera, the lens itself produces a shadow below the camera which is visible in these close up photos, a typical solution is to use a ring flash or ring light around the lens to provide even lighting coverage of the subject.

Instead of spending a few hundred dollars on a ring light or flash by Canon, I decided to hack my own. Since my camera already has a 58mm lens tube adapter and UV filter, I decided to laser cut an acrylic ring, sand one side to a ‘frosted’ finish for light diffusion, and glued a common 60mm LED ring light (runs from 12VDC unregulated) onto this acrylic ring. After sanding the inner ring for a friction fit, the ring was press-fit onto the UV filter.

Press fit LED ring onto the lens adapter/filter.

This sample image shows just how even the lighting is at close range in the foreground

Here is another sample close up image showing a 9V battery with background lighting, with and without foreground lighting from the LED ring light.

I plan to order in another 58mm lens adapter and a UV filter so I can simply swap the regular lens tube for the macro-light version without needing to screw and unscrew the 58mm UV filter repeatedly.

Another improvement is to properly terminate the power cable on both ends, and possibly make a small belt-pack with a battery. The lamp draws 180mA at 12V, thus 2.16W; using a small switch mode circuit I could probably make a 2xAA to 12V dc-dc converter. Another alternative is to use 14450 sized Li-ion batteries (same as AA), and design the switch mode circuit to use either AA or 14500 batteries (2.7 vs 1.5V per cell, input range varies but output should remain at 12V).

Total cost, about $10 ($8 ring light, $1-2 acrylic) plus the cost of the new adapter and filter.

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The newest addition to the family….

So there comes a time in life where one feels alone, and they decide to…

Oh who am I kidding, I got tired of photographing/filming in the basement lab with next to no lighting, so I went out and spent $56 on a 2x500W work light rig light cannon with tripod.

Quick and Dirty Timelapse Photography

So as I prep for a roadtrip, the thought of timelapse occured to me. I have already made some random timelapse test videos using my old Canon Powershot A40 and the software that came with it, however portability was always an issue.

Today, that is no longer an issue, I built in a few hours a frame to hold my old camera and a servo motor, and controlled the entire setup using a Arduino. The setup includes a LCD for display purposes, but in general is meant to quickly satisfy the need to do timelapse for the roadtrip drive. I plan to improve this a little bit, perhaps add a LM317 vreg so the entire setup is self-contained and powered off a 12V wall-wart or battery pack, however time is at a premium.

An experiment in timelapse

Shot at 5 seconds/frame while sorting $43.50 in coins. Sadly my old Canon powershot A40 which I use for timelapse decided to stop working, apparently due to the year 2009 bug which recently struck all 30gb Zune players. Fortunately setting the date back to 2008 fixed the problem.

As a bonus for my loyal readers (do I have any?), I just got CHDK working on my Canon S5IS, and I plan to do both timelapse photography (probably once it warms up a bit for outdoor shots in Toronto), and highspeed photography. CHDK allows external triggering using the USB port (by applying +5V, it will trigger the shutter once the voltage is removed), and with the external trigger feature, I plan to build both a sound trigger, and a multi-xenon tube flash array so that high speed events can be triggered with high-intensity flash on sound, or other triggers (eg: opto, logic output, etc). This is a big project for the future, so stay tuned.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, leave a comment down below, and bookmark this blog!